“Boomer’s won a lot of ballgames for us. The fact that he will be able to start, just makes it that much easier.” -JOE TORRE

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David Wells threw in the bullpen yesterday to test the bulging disc in his lower back and said he felt fine afterwards, maintaining that he will make his next scheduled start Friday against Baltimore.

A super-sized hole in the Yankee starting rotation was averted when Wells spread the good news that he felt no pain after throwing for about 20 minutes with manager Joe Torre and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre watching like hawks.

“After today,” Wells said, “I felt no pain.”

Added Torre: “Any time you can keep your pitching staff deep, that’s the most important thing. Boomer’s won a lot of ballgames for us. The fact that he will be able to start, just makes it that much easier.”

Wells, 40, is in the final year of his contract with the Yankees with a club option for another season. He said that if the Yankees do pick up that option, he would play one more year before retiring.

“I’ve always said if my option is picked up next year then I’ll play one more year and that’s it,” Wells said. “If I do play next year, there won’t be another one after that. Time to hang ‘em up.”

Wells is scheduled to throw again tomorrow before taking the hill against the Orioles at the end of the week for his first start since a no-decision on Aug. 11 at Kansas City. Since his last victory, July 19 against Cleveland, Wells had four starts without decisions.

“I think we have to make sure that when we do send him out to pitch, that he feels alright,” Torre said. “We certainly need to pay attention to it.”

The fact that Wells will be able to pitch Friday signals that Jose Contreras, when finished with his rehab assignment, will be sent to the bullpen. If Wells was not ready to go, Contreras would have returned in the starting rotation to fill either Wells’ spot or the struggling Jeff Weaver’s.

Sources confirmed yesterday, before Weaver was set to start against KC, that the Tampa branch of the Yankee family believes Contreras can skip his next scheduled rehab start with Staten Island and immediately fit into the starting rotation this week.

Torre gave no indication of that yesterday.

“He’ll probably have another start, and at that point in time, that’ll get us to [Aug. 21], where we have the schedule mapped out until – the schedule they gave us about a month ago as to how he was going to rehab,” Torre said of Contreras. “They got him ready as a starter because it’s safer to do that. If you get him ready as a reliever, he won’t throw enough pitches to be a starter. So you needed to do the starter part, and you can always revert to the reliever if you need to, but we’ll see. When it’s time for him to come back, we’ll see what our needs are.”

Over the weekend, the 31-year old Contreras threw a seven-inning shutout with 15 strikeouts against New York Penn League pups and seems ready to return from the shoulder injury that landed him on the DL on June 7.